Re: [Paddlewise] Ladysmith Paddlefest

Well, that'll teach me to post to PW with a gale-benumbed brain. I shoud'da
hung my gear and gone to bed last night after paddling. Anyway, sorry for the
mumbo-jumbo. Essentially, as your kayak moves through the water the bow must
push the water molecules out of the way. This creates an area of "high
pressure" from bow to mid-section approximately. The remaining water from
amidships to the stern is under "lower pressure." The skilled paddler will use
this fact to their advantage when a turn is required, for example. Because the
stern is so easily skidded sideways due to the _lower pressure_against the
hull, rather than focus on moving the bow in an arc, you rather concentrate on
performing strokes that kick the stern out. By leaning away from the turn, the
stern's underbelly skims across the water more readily too. (Try sculling your
paddle along the surface of the water by pointing the leading edge of the blade
down in to the water. Iit doesn't work very well. But lift the leading edge of
the blade slightly toward the sky, and you can easily skim it across the
surface).

And the faster you move the kayak forward, the more "low-pressure" is available
for the stern. In my recent sea Kayaker article on the Baffin Island incident,
I make a point of highlighting this phenomenon, because the folks who got into
trouble couldn't turn back up into the wind. Leaving their rudders down meant
the rear of their kayaks were less able to "skid-out." Here are my words in a
different context, but essentially conveying the same idea:

"Rosemary could have raised her rudder onto the rear deck. With a rudder
deployed, the stern of a kayak will not slip downwind, making it more
difficult, if not impossible, to get the bow turned into the wind. If she had
paddled hard and fast straight across the wind she could have taken advantage
of a kayak's tendency to weathercock: with more boat speed the turbulence at
the stern would allow it to slip downwind, causing her kayak to turn with less
effort into the wind. She would take
advantage of the weathercocking by using sweep strokes on the downwind side.
Rosemary also could have shifted her hands along the paddle shaft toward the
upwind blade, thereby allowing greater leverage for wide downwind sweep
strokes, and paddled only on the downwind side. Performing this kind of a turn
with a strong lean that places the kayak further on edge makes for an even
tighter turn. These are all skills learned with time and training."

I stayed away from stern draws, bow-rudder strokes, etc., as I was trying to
keep the text within the realm of moderately experienced paddlers/readers. Of
course, taking advantage of "low-pressure" water skidding to turn back up into
the wind can require paddling very fast and hard across the wind before
initiating the turn. This presupposes paddlers in good condition physically,
with the ability to handle wave dynamics and counterintuitive edging
strategies. I myself use a deep-draft rudder in conjunction with heavy leans
and wave utilization, or even head-in-the-water sculling to turn my kayak
(rudder up), being my approach to both static and dynamic turns, respectively.
Kayaks with chines respond best to "low-pressure" tactics it would seem, as do
kayaks designed to work with the phenomenon such as Foster's and the Mariners,
et al.

Nigel simply puts all this into context in his on-water demos. As far as one
syllable words, now your sounding like my editor :-)

Doug Lloyd

Joan Volin wrote:

> Nigel demonstrated his
> > well-known repertoire of edging, leaning, slid-slipping and
> > bow-ruddering maneuvers using the underlying principle that the kayak is
> > less encumbered by high pressure along the stern half when the kayak is
> > under sufficient movement generation, enabling the stern to kick-out
> > more readily than when static-induced turns are attempted. it took some
> > time before folks caught on to what he meant.
>
> I'm having some trouble understanding what this means.  Can you put it into
> English words of one syllable so my heat-benumbed brain can grasp it?
>
> Joan
>
> PS  Glad to hear you sounding more like the old Doug!  Keep it up.
> :)

YEAH, AND STAYING UP LATE POSTING TO PW. Not good.

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